The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of Achieve3000, a differentiated online literacy curriculum, on students' scores on the California State Test (CST). In the 2011-12 school year, 1,957 students in Chula Vista began using Achieve3000's solutions in 3rd through 8th grade. Using a form of propensity score matching called Inverse…

Success for All (SFA), one of the best-known school reform models, aims to improve the reading skills of all children but is especially directed at schools that serve large numbers of students from low-income families. First implemented in 1987, SFA combines a challenging reading program, whole-school reform elements, and an emphasis on continuous…

This is the second of three reports from MDRC's evaluation of the Success for All (SFA) scale-up demonstration, funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) competition. The report presents updated findings on SFA's implementation and impacts in the scale-up sites participating in the evaluation. The i3 evaluation…

Using a cluster randomized trial design, we evaluated the persistence of effects of a research-based model for scaling up educational interventions. The model was implemented in 42 schools in two city districts serving low-resource communities, randomly assigned to three conditions. In pre-kindergarten, the two experimental interventions were…

The Carnegie Learning Cognitive Tutor curricula are based on cognitive models, which include a representation of the learner's thinking, strategies, and misconceptions. The Cognitive Tutor curricula typically speed up learning and yield greater learning as compared to traditional math curricula (Morgan & Ritter, 2002; Sarkis, 2004; Koedinger,…

This is the final external evaluation report prepared by SRI International for the Rural Math Excel Partnership (RMEP) project, an investing in innovation (i3) development project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Operated by Virginia Advanced Study Strategies, Inc. (VASS), the RMEP project included six rural school districts (LEAs) in…

This study was conducted to explore the effects of a two-way immersion bilingual program on maintenance/acquisition of Spanish-language proficiency and on reading and mathematics achievement in English over a period of 4 academic years. The researchers used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques to compare the effects of two different…

The purpose of this large-scale, national study is to determine whether some early elementary school math curricula are more effective than others at improving student math achievement, thereby providing educators with information that may be useful for making adequate yearly progress (AYP). This report presents results from the first cohort of…

In an effort to identify instructional methods that might improve mathematics learning at the grade 4 level when used in a variety of educational settings under typical conditions, the REL Mid-Atlantic research team looked for promising, replicable practices that were being used broadly by teachers in U.S. schools, for which research showed…

The present research is a third-party study of the effects of the School Renaissance (SR) comprehensive school reform (CSR) model on student achievement in 11 elementary and middle schools in Texas. The primary measures used in the study were the Texas Learning Index (TLI) reading and mathematics scores obtained through administration of the Texas…